Alexis Still Burns
Despite success, City and Colour is still a side project for Dallas Green
Jen Zoratti

Who knew that a guy who plays in a screamo band could have an acoustic love affair on the side?

In the same way that Dallas Green’s power-punk quintet suddenly burst onto the scene in 2001, his side project, City and Colour, has been a very big deal lately.

With the release of his solo debut, Sometimes, and with the insta-hit Save Your Scissors already all over the radio, the Alexisonfire co-frontman (with screamer George Pettit) is ready to take his guitar across Canada. But the part-time crooner says City and Colour — a play on his name; Dallas equals City and Green equals colour — isn’t exactly a new thing for him.

“It’s always been me and my guitar before Alexis,” Green says. “I’ve been playing guitar since I was 15, and I’ve always been in a band. But it became City and Colour about a year ago.”

It was the Internet that brought Green’s spare-time hobby into the limelight. Underground rumblings about his acoustic abilities created such a buzz that a few of Green’s fledgling solo recordings found their way onto the web. That was when Green decided to cut an album to better showcase his unplugged talents.

“I never thought it was going to be bigger (than a side project). But kids at shows would ask me about it, and then a bunch of songs I wrote ended up on the Internet,” Green says. “It just snowballed from there. I wanted to put something out that I was actually proud of, other than songs I did in three hours.”

Sometimes is hyper-personal and quietly beautiful, a lyrical and melodic album that captures the sensibility of a folksinger as well as the grit of a punk rocker. With critical acclaim and fan hype — and the fact that he won an Indie award as favourite solo artist at Canadian Music Week earlier this month — it’s easy to speculate that Green might ditch his band for his side project.

Fear not, Alexisonfire fans. Green stresses that his fling with City and Colour is just ‘on the side.’ In fact, Alexis has been in the studio, and new material is due this summer.

“City and Colour is what I do in my spare time, seriously. I’d never say to the band, ‘Hey, guys, can we take a break so I can go do this?’” Green says. “People don’t even know that we’ve been in the studio. I think its going to surprise a lot of people when (the album) comes out.”

For the moment, however, Green is focusing on his first solo tour across the country. He’s enjoying the playing, but he doesn’t believe the hype around City and Colour — and he says no one else should, either.
“I have never once believed in the hype. I don’t have a lot of faith in myself that way,” Green laughs. “I’m not the guy that thinks, ‘Hey come see me play. I’m the shit.’”

His anti-hype applies to his live show as well.

“I hope people don’t expect it to be something it’s not,” he says. “It’s just me and a guitar.”